Defenders of the Rim: Beginnings: A Far Future SciFi Thriller

by Randal Sloan

  Lieutenant Jarra followed the directions on her implants to the office of the Commander. She had heard he was old school and she feared the worst, but secretly she admired him. Too much of that had been lost in the Empire. They needed to find a way to get some of it back, or they would pay someday. That was part of Jarra’s intense drive, a part of how she intended to make a difference. In particular, she expected to do her part to bring some of the old dedication back to the Rim Patrol.

  “Lieutenant Jarra Carsean reporting for duty,” she intoned as she came to attention and saluted the Commander. Stepping forward, she offered her order chip to the Commander, knowing their implants would already be initiating an encrypted transfer of the same orders. Although the Empire would use technology to its fullest, they would never lose their traditions. Jarra knew she was lucky they didn’t still require paper.

  Jarra technically wasn’t supposed to know her orders, the information compartmentalized away in her implants and encrypted on her chip, but on the first day of that terrible trip out, she’d already been extremely bored and she’d used her very high-end AI to hack and decrypt those orders. Which hadn’t told her a thing! Only that she was to report to duty and to be assigned at the discretion of the District Commander.

  “Welcome to Rim District HQ, Lieutenant. Please be seated. We need to talk about your assignment. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  #

  Jarra was in total shock. In those first moments with the Commander she quickly realized that she wasn’t going to get that assignment as the third watch bridge officer on a cruiser. When he did explain her assignment, she couldn’t believe it. But lieutenants didn’t question orders from commanders, so she automatically nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Now she was wondering just what the heck she had gotten herself into. Months had passed since the row with her father and he was on a minimum year-long assignment to the other side of the galaxy, so she doubted he had anything to do with it. Her uncle had promised to stay out of it, “For now.” Whatever that meant. Her records were sealed, so no way should even the District Commander in the Rim Patrol have been able to find out her real identity. She had made it all the way through OCS without it coming out, so she assumed she was still safe.

  No, this was just something to do with local politics and a chance opportunity that had come her way. It had to be. At least the Commander had seen that she had command potential, something that both thrilled her and terrified her at the same time. Plus, she had yet to meet her team. What if they all hated her? It didn’t matter; she was in it for the long haul and they all would just have to work it out.

  But Jarra finally admitted to herself, the most amazing thing of all, she was getting a ship! Her very own command, a very small ship the Commander had stated quite emphatically, but nevertheless, a ship. How many lieutenants got to brag about that? Wow! She couldn’t wait to go see it, but for tonight she had to settle into her quarters and sleep at least a few hours. She did instruct her implant to wake her early before she let it slip her into the rhythms of sleep. Without its assistance, she doubted she would have slept at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Paths that Just Might Cross

  Galen Sabatino stared in shock at the posting on the board at the Rim Patrol Academy. The Rim Patrol ran on traditions; traditions such as the posting of the orders for the new Rim Patrol service specialists on the day after their graduation. Unlike for officers, who had more specific orders and at least had moved up to chips, the postings for the specialists were displayed on the board. To get the details of their orders, the young men and women in question were expected to report to their assigned officer, usually the XO if posted on a ship or the Commander’s Assistant if posted on a planet or space station.

  Galen had expected to at least be posted on a normal patrol ship, probably a destroyer, but he still hoped he might make a cruiser. Instead of orders to catch a shuttle to the ship in orbit or on patrol, his orders were not so forthcoming. Detached posting. Report at 0800 to Lieutenant Jarra Carsean in Sector 17, Bay A21, Rigelus spaceport. No mention of a ship, although he assumed something was in that bay, which meant it was some kind of ship. Obviously, it was something considerably smaller than a destroyer if it was able to land at the Rigelus capitol spaceport.

  What the heck? I should have gotten something better than that. Normally, I could ask around and find out about the ship, get an idea of what kind of officer I would be serving under. I’ve never even heard of a Lieutenant Jarra Carsean.

  Galen queried the local Rim Patrol AI. Surprisingly, the lieutenant came up, so at least the posting wasn’t totally bogus. Just arrived by courier ship this morning, the AI told him. It went on to give a few other details, the most important being that she had just graduated from OCS. Not good. Probably thinks she knows it all…

  There’s no other way to do this but to show up and hope for the best. Good thing I came early to look at the board. At least none of my friends are here to give me a hard time about it.

  That would still come during the day he knew, but hopefully he would only have to deal with the flack from them by com instead of face-to-face. He glanced around to be sure he was still alone and then scanned the board looking for his classmates’ postings. Most he saw were posted to ships, and he recognized a lot of the ship names. Many of them had good postings. Why not me? It’s just not fair. I know I did better than some of them.

  Galen couldn’t resist one more scan; looking to see if anyone had a posting to the same unnamed ship. It didn’t take him long to spot a name, Gabo Rollins. He scratched his head — that name sounded familiar. Then he remembered. There had been a science lab fire that shut down the lab for the rest of the year; it seemed like the name of the student that caused it was Gabo. Oh, no! No way could that be good.

  Surprisingly, he spotted another, Sara Colson. Another strange bird. At least she was better looking. Galen remembered Sara quite well. With her blond hair and superb figure, she could have been one of the more popular students, but she seemed distant and reserved those few times he talked with her, nor did she appear to have many friends. Not much better.

  He didn’t see any others and it was time to get away before his “friends” showed up. At least he had some time to try to dig up anything he could find on Lieutenant Jarra Carsean. That was not a name he had ever heard before. Just his luck, she was probably an odd one too.

  #

  Detached posting. Report at 0800 to Lieutenant Jarra Carsean in Sector 17, Bay A21, Rigelus spaceport.

  Sara Colson stared at the VR image her implants were displaying. What the heck did that mean?

  Sara had just completed the Rim Patrol Specialist Training class on Rigelus as the initial part of her required service to the Empire. Sara was a hacker extraordinaire, but her latest exploit had landed her in hot water. Her service in the Rim Patrol was part of a mandatory settlement of her latest visit to the District justice system. It wasn’t her fault that her last attempted hack had caused half of the defenses of the District Capitol to go down for several hours. She just wanted to see what was out there. Plus, nothing bad had happened and she had even helped them to bring it back up. Jeez!

  Sara hadn’t been able to resist hacking the Rim Patrol AI to find out where she would be posted, instead of gathering like the rest of her fellow students to gawk at the board. She hadn’t really gotten close to anyone during her time here, at first angry at her forced servitude, and later so engrossed in her studies that she couldn’t make the time.

  To be honest, Sara hadn’t expected a good posting. She doubted they would want her on any of the ships of the line, although they claimed her records were sealed. Somehow Sara doubted that would stop the Captain or XO of those ships from finding out the details one way or the other. No, she had expected a planet or station-based posting where they could keep an eye on her. What she read didn’t seem to fit either of those.

  Who the heck was Lieutenant Jarra Carsean? A quick c
heck revealed she was a much too young lieutenant who should just now be arriving on Rigelus. There was absolutely nothing there but plain vanilla information, but yet the girl had graduated from the Rim Patrol OCS school with highest honors. Somehow, she won the Medal of Valor, for God’s sake. That immediately threw up red flags. That was so obvious; someone was covering up the details to the point it made her laugh.

  Sara immediately started trying to dig up more. If anyone could get through the obvious smokescreen, she could do it. An hour later, Sara just shook her head. This one was an enigma to her, because she had found absolutely nothing on the girl other than the original information. Instead of laughing, she’d started to worry. Apparently she’d found one she couldn’t crack. That meant that they were using some extremely powerful AI’s, something that made her curiosity about the young lieutenant and her assignment even stronger.

  #

  Gabo Rollins had barely remembered to go check the Rim Patrol assignment board. Deep in his latest project, he’d lost track of what day it was. The listing of the posts was important enough that he eventually remembered he really needed to check it.

  Gabo had high hopes of getting an assignment in research, although he worried that he might get put on a dead-end project that kept him from using his full potential. Gabo worked best by moving from one project to another; his brain often presented him with the solution to a prior problem when he was concentrating on the one currently in front of him.

  Without the help of others, Gabo knew he was often lost to the real world and that led to more than one unfortunate incident. The worst had been the time he left one of his basic experiments heating in a lab to check on another project that he considered more interesting and he had forgotten about the first one. To be fair, he had done that same experiment when he was ten, but his professor had insisted he do it again. He knew what the results would be; that is, what they would have been if the experiment hadn’t been allowed to get too hot. The result of all that was, to the ire of his professor, he smoked the entire lab, earning him the only reprimand he had on his record.

  Of course, all the other students laughed at that little incident. He suspected most either thought he was totally stupid or that he had done it on purpose. At least when he went to his posting, surely he would get to finally move on.

  By the time Gabo reached the posting board, he was the only one there. That caused Gabo to give a slight smile. At least I missed the crowd.

  Of course, the first time he looked through the names, he didn’t see his posting. Slow down, Gabo; it’s got to be there.

  Finally he found his name. Detached posting. Report at 0800 to Lieutenant Jarra Carsean in Sector 17, Bay A21, Rigelus spaceport. That told him absolutely nothing, other than he’d better be there on time in the morning. I hope that Lieutenant is not too big a stickler for timeliness. Knowing me, I’ll get lost. At least I won’t have to catch a shuttle. Gabo wouldn’t have had any idea how to do that.

  #

  Young Sub-Lieutenant Sasha Alexandrai, Imperial Intelligence, stared at the bulkhead in the ship she was currently traveling aboard. She wondered again just how the last day could have gone so badly.

  At the beginning of the time in question, Sasha had just finished her latest data dive and it had produced some very surprising results. She wasn’t sure what to do about it — if she even believed it herself — rebels and aliens. Neither of those seemed likely on the surface, but that was what the data told her. The drones that had swept the Rigelus system contained a unique combination of tech never seen before anywhere else. Her research in the massive data stream from her station on one of the core worlds of the Galactic Empire was limited only by the amount of extraneous information. If anything, though, that data only served to reduce the probability percentages she had calculated: Probability of Rebel Involvement - 82%; Probability of Alien Involvement - 79%.

  Sasha considered the possibility of requesting a direct feed to the Rigelus data stream. That would let her fine-tune her results, but the odds of getting that approved were zero and none. Her immediate supervisor was an idiot; he would squash such a request, but if she submitted her report to him, he would squash that too. Part of that was her fault; Sasha knew she was a bit of an idiot savant, her abilities to dig out data and look for patterns were second to none, not even AI’s; they generated so many false positives, their usefulness was limited. She should have worked harder to get along with the man, but it wasn’t her fault that her social skills were lagging. He should have been the one trying harder. But that meant she was left with one choice — bypass her supervisor and take her report directly to someone closer to the top.

  Dumping the report and the details that backed it up to a chip, Sasha prepared to leave her work area. She would have to hurry if she was going to get into the Galactic Intelligence main office on Santaigo Station; they would go into overnight lockdown in a few minutes. Rushing down the tight corridor, Sasha worried about how she would get in to see someone high enough to understand the significance of the data. Sasha’s headlong rush was interrupted as she crashed into someone, the chip flying out of her hand and Sasha herself tumbling to the floor.

  Unfortunately for the man Sasha collided with, the cup of hot coffee he carried didn’t go flying away; instead, it splashed all over him. Sasha felt a flash of indignation — why had the fool not had his AI broadcasting his location? That would have prevented a collision as her AI would have warned her. But her irritation at the collision didn’t last long. No, her irritation turned to pure fear; the man was wearing an admiral’s uniform and the look on his face told her all.

  “You stupid girl! Why don’t you look where you’re going?” he sputtered. Leaving her lying in the floor, the man turned to his assistant. “We have to go back to the office — I’ll have to get another uniform. Call the Director and tell him I’m going to be late. No free drinks for you tonight and the Director is not going to be happy. He probably won’t like your budget proposals.”

  The admiral didn’t see the expression on the assistant’s face, but Sasha did. It was a horrendous grimace. Sasha swore the man started to give her a kick, but instead he turned and followed his admiral. She’d probably ruined his evening.

  Picking herself up, Sasha limped after them. She quickly lost sight of the two, not that she cared. The result of all of that was when Sasha arrived at the local Imperial Intelligence office, they were just getting ready to close up. The clerk at the front tried to insist that she would have to come back the next day, but Sasha wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “What I have is extremely important,” she told her. “Priority One!”

  Sasha knew she’d said the magic words. That had to be investigated at all costs. Still, she wound up cooling her heels for several minutes in the tiny reception area.

  All of that led to Sasha being ushered into a plush office, the likes of which she’d never seen on station before. Even more so, when the man looked up from his implant-generated VR, Sasha realized it was that very same admiral.

  “You!” the man growled. “I just had to reschedule my dinner reservations, all because of you. Now I’m having to work past the end of my day. What do you want?”

  Sasha knew this was not good. She really needed to get her message communicated. She held out the chip she’d been carrying, the one she’d had to dig up off the floor.

  “I have data here that suggests a high probability of rebels out of the Rigelus District. Possibly even aliens. I need to get access to the data feeds direct from Rigelus to verify it.”

  Admiral Kosak gave her a look of disgust. He threw the chip down on his desk. “I don’t know how in the universe you came up with such nonsense. My staff is fully aware of everything going on in the galaxy, and if there were any truth to that, they would have known about it.”

  He laughed, an unpleasant sound. Punching a touch link on his desk, he paged his assistant. “Jackson, get in here!”

  While he was waiting, he to
ld Sasha, “You want to check the Rigelus feeds? We can fix that for you.”

  The same unhappy assistant Sasha remembered from before stuck his head in the door. “Do we have any ships leaving for Rigelus in the next few hours? Find one, and get the Sub-Lieutenant on it. Make sure she gets the full tour on her way.”

  That was how Sasha now found herself on an Imperial Navy frigate heading somewhere in the general direction of Rigelus. She hoped she never traveled by frigate again. Not fast like a destroyer, and not powerful like a cruiser or a battleship, she wondered again just what purpose they served. Not comfortable transportation, that was for sure based on the tiny quarters they’d given her. Already twenty-four hours into a trip she knew would take weeks, she was bored to death with that tiny space.

  To make things even worse, apparently the admiral’s assistant had taken out his own anger on her, probably due to the constant ranting he had to deal with from the admiral. She was pretty sure he’d passed on something bad about her to the crew of the ship before he left. Although so far they hadn’t physically harmed her, she’d been treated with disdain and contempt by most of the crew.

  But the one that finished it off as far as Sasha was concerned, her chip was still somewhere on Santaigo Station, probably on that stupid admiral’s desk if he hadn’t thrown it out. At least it was encrypted to the point only a Galactic Intelligence weenie such as herself would be able to decrypt it. On this pathetic excuse for a ship she had no way to attempt retrieval of the data again. They wouldn’t have the bandwidth dedicated to them on the Galactic web, even if they would have been willing to let her use it. By the time she got to where she was going, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. She hoped it wasn’t really rebels and aliens.